CS 373 Spring 2022 — Week 11 Blog, Joseph Muffoletto
What did you do this past week?
This past week, I partially completed my distributed computing lab, continued catching up in my verification/synthesis course, helped complete phase 3 of our SWE project, traded away my monstera cuttings, and spent time with friends.
What’s in your way?
I need to fully catch up in my verification course and do enough to pass Roman History. I have also had some difficulty with motivation, so I will keep sticking to a schedule in hopes of maintaining enough discipline to complete the semester.
What will you do next week?
For this week, I hope to register for my courses, followup on my autonomous systems research, complete a literature review for my verification/synthesis project, volunteer as a tutor at a local elementary school, finish my reading assignment for Reinforcement Learning, and find pots for the rest of my cuttings.
What did you think of Paper 12. Why extends is evil?
“Extends is evil” was a fairly intuitive reading and contained relevant applications to our projects. First, I thought it was interesting how the Agile method does not require a full project scope before coding can begin. This is contrary to what we have learned in our classes, but it makes sense for speeding up production in practice. Second, I liked that the authors provided a general guideline for instance variables: always private. While strict, its a helpful rule that is easy enough to remember. Moreover, it encourages the developer to store the minimum amount of state that they need.
What was your experience of natural join and SQL.? (this question will vary, week to week)
SQL seems fairly intuitive, but definitely takes a bit of an adjustment. Once we learn the keywords, the logic is pretty similar to the programming languages we have worked with. I do enjoy how close it feels to “talking” to the computer.
What made you happy this week?
I got to spend quality time with my roommates this week. We’ve all been friends since middle school, but with school and our extracurriculars, it's harder to consciously make time for each other.
What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?
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